Toxins
by skyspireskit3
Summary: An alternate ending for the short Gotham Knight film “Deadshot.” Some days, even Batman has doubts. BrucexJoker.


"**Deadshot" is an animated film from the **_**Batman: Gotham Knight**_** collection. I am fully aware that "Deadshot," as with every film in **_**Gotham Knight,**_** is supposed to take place before **_**The Dark Knight**_**, but here "Deadshot" takes place after _Dark Knight_ so I can add Heath Ledger's Joker to the mix. Again, my attempts at **_**Sharp Teeth**_**-style.**

**I watched a show called **_**Batman Unmasked, the Psychology of Batman**_** on the History Channel, where it was talking about Batman and his obession with carrying out justice, his unwavering stance, and I wrote this story in an attempt to explore his weaker, human side, the part of all of us that's whiny and petty (though I think with Batman it's just a **_**bit**_** more justified, considering where he's coming from) and wants everything our own way, that no amount of training and self-disipline (not even Batman's) can wipe out of anybody.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the __****Dark Knight****, or **_**Batman: Gotham Knight**_

* * *

Sometimes, late  
mask and cape or not, he goes  
outside Gotham City  
and stands against the wind,  
watching the polluted black waters  
rasp at the shores  
and wishes  
they would swell over and sweep  
all he knows away.

-

The batsignal appears.  
He sighs, and he goes  
repeating his mantra

_Batman has no limits._

Deadshot.  
Another freak, another roach  
drawn to the rot of Gotham City.  
Assassin-for-hire, can shoot the wingtips off a wasp, and  
he's just killed  
Teresa Williams  
the last of the white knights that are so rare in Gotham.  
Batman spreads his stiffening cape, plunging twelve stories  
into a gut-lurching dive  
hoping he won't enjoy breaking this bastard's arms  
as much as he knows he will.

With Alfred's omnipresent voice buzzing  
in the earpiece of his suit, Batman follows Deadshot  
through the darkened maze of Gotham,  
the assassin's bullets  
whistling past his face all the while.

Deadshot makes his mistake, and opens fire  
on Gordon  
then he tries to escape onto a train.  
But you can't escape from the Dark Knight  
any more than you can from your own shadow.  
The Batman's boots thud to the roof of the train as it clatters down, down  
deep into its tunnel underground.  
Deadshot is waiting  
with a shining  
hot hailstorm of bullets.

Inside the train,  
no one pays any attention to the man  
sitting alone in the back.  
He keeps his face hidden behind a newspaper  
and the high-drawn collar of his long coat  
despite the dark hour, sunglasses shield his eyes.  
The visible slivers of his skin  
are daubed in ghostly white  
and the hair spilling from under his hat is dyed green.  
The man watches the commuters, thinking  
Don't mind _me_, folks  
just another freak  
in the freak kingdom.  
I could, and oh I will, show you all  
_you_  
the giggling wenches, the big man and his brat, the sloppy blue suit  
every one of you  
how this song of Armageddon is strung.  
But right now there's something else that needs doing.  
The black tail of a familiar cape flits past the window,  
of course no one else sees  
and it's time for him to go.

Deadshot doesn't miss  
and Batman stumbles back  
blood pouring warm beneath his fingers clutching  
at the bat on his breastplate, and helpless  
as a feather in a duststorm  
he falls over the side.  
Deadshot laughs, cocking his gun, ready to follow  
and finish the job.  
He aims for the black-gloved fingers clinging to the edge.  
Why was he ever afraid of the big black bat?  
A soft click,  
and he turns his head automatically, too fast  
to register  
That's a gun.  
BLAM!  
and his own weapon goes flying as  
his arm is blown nearly off.  
He screams and goes down on his knees .  
Sweat scalds his eyes, he sees the man  
standing ten feet away with the smoking gun.  
The overhead lights dart past, alternating slabs of harsh gold  
over the bastard's face  
painted white with a red scrawled, dead strumpet's mouth.  
Deadshot has seen this face before, in fuzzy black and white pictures  
on the evening news  
taking up too much of _his_ works' stories.  
"You! You're the-!"  
The train sends a jolt up his legs, his wound coughs blood  
the arm hanging on by threads. A thought comes like a blow  
worse than the pain: he'll never be able to shoot again.  
The Joker steps up to him, smiling. "'The…' ?"

Half-conscious, Batman clings like a spider  
to the side of the train  
and to his mantra  
as he tries to pull himself back up.  
_Batman_  
_has_  
_no_

_no_

Up close, the assassin sees  
the scars on the Joker's face, those rough tracks of dead flesh  
and even he, the fearless Deadshot, feels sick.  
The Joker smiles.  
"You like these scars?"  
A knife flashes in his hand.  
"Wanna know how I got 'em?"  
He plunges the blade into the open gape  
of Deadshot's mouth, digging it deep  
into the inner softness of the cheek.  
His voice is a growl, not human.  
"It went something like _this_…"

Batman clings to the slick metal of the roof  
of the train  
almost back up  
when he hears the scream.

What Batman sees is a dark arc of blood  
cleaving through the air  
as the Joker rips his knife free.  
Deadshot falls back, hard onto the roof  
his head hanging over the side.  
He can't get free, the Joker is pinning him down  
and his eyes bulge in terror as he sees  
the protruding wedges  
of the elaborate tunnel wall coming on fast.  
The Joker is making no jokes now,  
his eyes cold and pitiless  
as the sucking black holes  
that eat the stars from space.

Deadshot's steel skull-mask is ripped away  
revealing the phony tan, the thin dandy's mustache  
as the wall shears off the top of his skull.  
Blood and spattered brainpulp leave a long trail behind  
as the train goes on unhindered.  
Deadshot's screams crack, his eyes roll as  
his head is grated away  
deeper and deeper. Finally the eyes show  
their blank white undersides  
and the corpse falls from the Joker's grip to shatter  
under the rumbling wheels below.

Batman stands stone-still, carved out  
with horror and pain.  
His jaw hangs open and fills up fast  
with the shrieking wind.

The Joker looks up, as if just noticing  
the Batman was there.  
Batman gets a glimpse of the maniac's eyes and they turn  
his marrow to ice.  
Then the look fades, and the Joker bares  
his usual infuriating grin.  
Batman makes his way towards him over their precarious perch  
hating the blood that won't stop spilling where he steps.  
He grits out through his teeth, "Deadshot was _mine_."  
"Emphasis there on the _was_," says the Joker, but he doesn't move  
letting the Batman come to him.  
The crime fighter grabs him by the front of his coat, eyes blazing.  
But the Joker just watches him calmly.  
Here they are as always. The juggernaught  
against the one wall that won't fall.  
The Batman's face is paling with the loss of blood, and his arms have begun to tremble.  
"You know," says the Joker, "you're not lookin' too good there."  
Batman's rage boils up like hot adder venom, a million things  
he wants to roar  
but all that comes out is  
"Why…did you save me?"  
The Joker chuckles.  
"Like I said, life's just too dull without you. I'd probably kill myself."  
Batman's vision blurs  
the pain making him dizzy.  
Before he goes limp, he feels it between them  
like a wisp of smoke  
that they both know damn well why  
the Joker just did what he did.  
Alfred's voice in his ear, the rattling of the train  
meld together into a long whine of static.  
Then he slumps, hands still fisted  
in the Joker's coat.  
"Damn…you…"  
And that grinning face  
is the last thing he sees for a while.

-

Late that night  
Bruce Wayne  
sits in bed, watching the news:  
about Deadshot, believed to be  
the latest victim  
of the masked vigilante who was once called a hero.  
Microphones are stabbed into the faces of three stoners who swear  
they saw the Batman, saw him tearing Deadshot limb from limb.  
A glimpse of Gordon at the scene, waving away  
the cameras, his expression set in marble  
while a young officer nearby sports a tinge of green.  
Bruce sighs  
his bandaged torso throbs, slightly dulled by painkillers  
weaker and fewer than he really needs.  
The Joker lies beside him on top of the sheets  
face scrubbed clean, so young and innocent-looking  
behind the scars  
it's hard to believe he's the same monster from the tunnel.  
His cheek is pressed against Bruce's hip, sound asleep.

Bruce knows  
for the good of Gotham  
this maniac in his bed  
should be rotting in prison.  
The world is the Joker's board game, he throws the dice and doesn't  
give a shit  
where or how they land  
so long as they take out as much in their path, be it  
lives, feeling hearts or unbroken minds  
as they can.  
But Bruce does nothing.  
He needs this.  
He won't give it up.  
The selfish curl  
is almost a balm  
after being stretched so thin for so long.

Inside him is a whisper that crawls  
back up faster than he can tear it down.  
It hisses that he's thrown his life, everything, all that he is and all  
that he could ever have been  
into the maw of this city with both hands  
and the city will always bay for more, the good gone and forgotten  
as fast as it can be digested,  
while the rotten chunks linger  
in the cold belly forever.  
It's just like the Joker said:  
"See, that's the problem with being  
incorruptible.  
It's hard to keep up.  
Sure, your hungry little doggies'll love you  
so long  
as you keep shoveling down the food. They don't care  
how much of your blood and sweat goes into it, maybe it even adds flavor  
but  
they get one taste  
just _one_ _little taste_  
of any shit that's mixed in  
and they'll all go rabid and tear you to bits.  
How'daya like them blood oranges?"

Bruce had hopes  
to inspire  
to lead his corner of the world out of the darkness.  
He doesn't want to think now  
just how rancid all his hopes have become.  
And that whisper is there to remind him  
every day  
his cause is not lost  
because how can something  
that was never there before be gone?  
It barks out a laugh that would frighten the Joker  
when Bruce tells those who will listen that he thinks Gotham can still be saved.  
It reminds him that Gotham  
has taken and taken and will continue to take until  
there are no more pieces of him left, and still  
the blackness will be no brighter  
than it was when he started.

But still  
he goes on.  
And on.  
And on.  
And so  
doesn't he deserve  
_something_?

Bruce switches the TV off, strokes the Joker's hair  
and turns his gaze to the moon out the window.  
If, in that instance, the batsignal should appear in the sky  
he isn't sure he would answer it.  
Maybe  
even the Batman has his limits, sometimes

but he listens to  
the quiet, gilded  
with the soft breathing  
of his crooked lover,  
drinks it in  
and this  
he knows for sure:  
some days it's only moments like these that keep  
him from being  
swallowed up  
by Gotham's toxic sea.

* * *

**Okay, maybe I went a little overboard on the "emo-ish Bruce" thing, but oh well. **

**Review, please.**


End file.
